The views published here are of an ecosocialist nature and from the broad red, green and black political spectrum. The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the writers and are not necessarily the view of any political parties or groupings that they belong to. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, you can email us at mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Sunday, 30 September 2018

It has been
said that science fiction is not about the future, but a way of commenting on
the present. With that in mind contemplate a vision of New York City in 2140.
The seas have risen, and downtown Manhattan is flooded like Venice. The streets
have become canals, and boats have replaced cars and busses. Skywalks between
buildings have replaced sidewalks.

The wealthy
have fled uptown, living in “superscrapers” made possible by new building
materials. In the “intertidal” zone of lower Manhattan former corporate
headquarters, such as the Met Life building, have become housing units run by
cooperatives. Here the less well to do live in cramped living spaces so small
that meals are taken in communal dining halls. They are the comparatively lucky
ones. Others, less fortunate, are squatters in crumbling buildings in danger of
falling into the canals. This is the vision conjured up by Kim Stanley Robinson
in his latest novel New York 2140.

In this
dystopian future, it seems that every bad idea for dealing with climate change
has already been tried. After the first Pulse, or meltdown of the Greenland and
Antarctic ice fields, in the late 21st century geo-engineering was tried. This
of course temporarily slows the meltdown, but does not prevent a second Pulse
from occurring in the early 22nd century, raising sea levels further. “Vertical
farming,” the conversion of floors of urban buildings into spaces for growing
food, is widespread, but serves only to supplement the diet of the residents of
those buildings. Most unbelievable of all, despite a major financial crisis in
the wake of the first Pulse, capitalism thrives and continues to grow. The
government has bailed out the banks and financial firms once more. Neoliberal
austerity has been imposed on the people yet again.

Not for long
though. Kim Stanley Robinson identifies himself politically as a democratic
socialist, and the dystopian picture he creates sets the stage for a revolt
against the capitalist world-system. The main characters in the novel are those
who hatch a scheme for bringing the system down, and then nationalizing rather
than bailing-out banks and financial firms.

The novel is
largely structured around its’ characters, and in two cases pairs of
characters. The novel is divided into 8 parts, with 8 chapters in each part.
Each of the 8 chapters focuses on each of the 5 characters, and 2 pairs while a
separate chapter has various titles such as ‘the citizen’ or ‘the city.’ In these
separate chapters the narrator provides us with background information
regarding the history of his imagined world.

Mutt and Jeff
are the first characters introduced. They are unemployed “quants”-financial
analysts- living in a “hotello”- an inflatable shelter- on the farm level of
the Met Life building. Inspector Gen Octaviasdottir, an African-American
policewoman with an impressively Scandinavian surname, is the second character
we meet. A fellow inhabitant of the Met Life building she is assigned the case
when Mutt and Jeff mysteriously disappear. Inspector Gen then interviews
Charlotte Armstrong, who works for the Householders Union and is chairperson of
the building co-op. Inspector Gen then interviews Vlade, a Ukrainian immigrant
who is superintendent of the cooperative.

Also living
in the Met Life building are: Franklin Garr, an upwardly mobile financial
trader engaged in arbitrage who comes to be dissatisfied with his function in
society; Stefan and Roberto, two ‘river rats,’ homeless orphans whom Vlade is
concerned for (his own son having drowned years ago), and who spend their days
diving in the canals and river trying to find the site of the wreck of the HMS
Hussar which sank during the American Revolution; finally Amelia Black, the
star of a “cloud show” in which she travels the world in her airship, the
Assisted Migration, helping to move animal populations to more appropriate
locations on the post-climate change planet. These are the characters who
conspire to bring the world’s financial system to its’ knees.

The trigger
for the revolt is a hurricane, a superstorm that wreaks havoc on New York City
in 2143. Living a precarious existence in the intertidal zone thousands of
people now find themselves homeless. They crowd into Central Park, where all
the trees have been completely flattened by the storm. Facing a city government
more sympathetic to corporate interests than the welfare of its’ citizens they
become an enraged mob that heads uptown to storm the superscrapers of the
wealthy. For there is surplus housing in New York, much of which belongs to
absentee owners who purchased it primarily as an investment, or as a place to
stay for the few times in the year they actually visit the city.

The angry
masses confront the security personnel of the wealthy owners, and a bloodbath
is narrowly avoided by the timely actions of Inspector Gen who takes the side
of the protestors. Returning from upstate New York where the Assisted Migration
has had to flee from the storm Amelia, viewing these events from above, issues
a call to action to the audience of her show. The plan: a debtor’s strike in
which all rents, mortgages and student loans will now go unpaid. The revolt
spreads worldwide and the overleveraged financial system crashes.

New York 2140
is a brilliant novel, yet is not without flaws. That capitalism continues until
2143 without running into any ‘limits to growth’ strains credulity. So does the
idea that a second financial crisis occurs in the 21st century without
engendering any anti-systemic revolt.Can we seriously believe that a second such event in this century
involving a government bailout for banks, and financial firms, while further
imposing austerity on the masses would be accepted with resignation?

We are told
that in the wake of the first and second pulses global civilization has had to
rebuild, but could all this actually happen in a political climate of greater
austerity, without government intervention for the welfare of the citizens?
While we are informed that a process for sequestering carbon from the air leads
to the creation of new building materials allowing for the construction of
superscrapers, little to nothing is said about the energy sources used for what
is clearly a high tech society. While buildings have vertical farms, we are
also told that large swathes of the Midwest have been depopulated to provide
corridors for migrating animals. How does this society manage to feed itself?
Some things Mr. Robinson relates here strain credulity.

Keeping in
mind the maxim that science fiction is less about the future than a commentary
on the present, it is possible, but just barely, to overlook these flaws. The
strength of the book lies in Mr. Robinson’s abilities as a storyteller, in his
creation of sympathetic characters that one can identify with, and in the way
that the novel is structured. He is also skillful in writing dialogue. There is
a wealth of obscure historical information regarding Herman Melville’s life in
New York, or the facts relating to the HMS Hussar.

He creates an
interesting tapestry of the life of the city and its’ inhabitants. That, along
with the political message the author successfully transmits, certainly makes
for a compelling story. The concept of a debtor’s strike is an interesting
suggestion for future political action. Perhaps it is best to approach the
novel as a warning for our time rather than as a picture of the 22nd century.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 is a brilliant, if flawed, masterpiece.

Friday, 28 September 2018

Flicking
through media reports of the Labour Party conference this week, it slowly
dawned on me that the tone had changed, in some, if not all of the outlets that
have been running an antisemitism smear campaign against the party all summer.
The conference has been reported in mildly favourable terms, although it was
largely harmonious for Labour, in contrast to the expected turmoil of the
upcoming Tory party conference, I still thought this was strange.

The rancour
has already begun at the Tory party conference which begins this weekend, with
the first shots fired by Boris Johnson with his ‘better
Brexit plan’ and grass roots activists calling the prime minister’s Chequers
plan ‘a betrayal.’ There will no doubt be much plotting behind the scenes
and critical fringe meetings, mostly about Brexit. So, this may be in part an
explanation of the interest in Labour policies by some business leaders and the
media.

In the
liberal media, writers in the Guardian, who were completely opposed to Jeremy
Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party, like Polly Toynbee, are now singing
the praises of Labour. Uber Blairite, Martin Kettle, who boasted of playing
tennis with Blair, and has been very critical of Labour’s shift to the left, has
also come around, it seems.

Further to
the political right, The Times had a leader piece which concludes, “In the
battle for ideas between the two main parties, the quality is low but Mr Corbyn
is right that he is winning.” The Telegraph leader warns that Corbyn’s speech
ended on “a triumphalist note that the Tories urgently need to silence with a
plan of their own.”

The Evening
Standard, edited by former Tory chancellor, George Osborne, included
an editorial this week which looks very much like a softening of its
hostility to Corbyn’s Labour.

Take this for example:

‘You may
think, as we do, that John McDonnell’s plans to give workers 10 per cent of the
shares of private companies and renationalise the water industry will only
deter investment and damage productivity. But they are concrete policies that
deserve serious scrutiny. For all the talk from Downing Street about addressing
the “burning injustices”, can anyone remember a single policy to address them —
and does anyone think this will be the main topic of conversation when the
Tories meet next week in Birmingham? No. It’s dangerous for a government when
it’s the opposition that starts setting the policy agenda.’

What is going
on then? Yes, the Tory government’s Brexit handling has been an embarrassment,
but I detect something deeper is happening with establishment thinking. This
thought has been kicking around in my head all week, then yesterday I saw Adam
Ramsay’s video from Labour’s conference on Open
Democracy’s Facebook page, take a look if you haven’t already, it is well
worth a viewing.

Ramsay
perhaps has the answer to this strange turn of events. He thinks that the
‘British establishment, British state, British capital’ is trying to ‘re-inflate
the ancient regime’ because it has lost legitimacy with a large swath of the
public, and allowing a Labour government to do a few nice things, like raise
taxes on the wealthy, introduce some green policies and renationalise the
railways and utilities, will repair the damage. Then another financial crisis
will occur, and the Tories will be back in, and it will be back to business as
usual.

This was what
happened with new Labour, although it didn’t attempt anything as radical as
today’s Labour is promising, but did smooth off a few of the rough edges of
neo-liberalism. There is no doubt that a Labour government would be better than
the a Tory one, even Blair’s Labour was a bit, but will this momentum that has
built up be co-opted by the establishment and so lose its way? I think that
there a very good chance of that happening.

As Ramsay
says, this is not inevitable though, and some in Labour are thinking these
thoughts, but it is certainly a danger.

Brexit was a
warning to the British establishment, that many people are not happy with their
lot, although the EU is not central to this, the referendum gave the
opportunity to voters to voice their dissatisfaction more generally. Some in
the Tory party are trying to use this to push a small state with low regulation
if any, as the answer. But this would make matters worse, not better. Some in
the establishment recognise this.

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

Well, that’s what the prime minister, Theresa May, said
as she arrived in New York for a United Nations summit, which take in trade
talks with the US amongst others. The idea of pursuing a Canada style free
trade deal has been gaining ground in the Tory party since the European Union
(EU) pretty much rubbished May’s Chequers plan, for our exit from the bloc.

May, of course, is desperate for Chequers to be at
least the basis for a withdrawal agreement, having put so much political
capital into it, so she is trying to dig in ahead of the Tories conference next
week. She argues that Chequers is better than no deal, in that it attempts to
give us some kind of favourable arrangements with the EU, more than no deal
anyway. She claims it offers a solution to keeping open the border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic whereas a Canada style deal is worse than no
deal, in that it would break up the UK.

May said the Brexiters’ plan would necessitate a hard
Irish border and thus invoke the EU’s so-called backstop, which would keep
Northern Ireland within elements of the customs union and single market,
effectively drawing a border in the Irish Sea.

As she said: ‘I think a bad deal will be a deal, for
example, that broke up the United Kingdom. We want to maintain the unity of the
United Kingdom.’

It is true that the EU have said that any offer of a
Canada style deal with the UK is contingent on the backstop agreement of last
December, of Northern Ireland remaining in the customs union and single market.
We know that the Democratic Unionist Party, who May relies for a governing majority
are strongly opposed to this, so it probably wouldn’t get through Parliament
anyway, and could collapse the government.

Presumably, May thinks that a hard border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic is preferable to what is on offer in the form
of a Canada style deal. There has been talk coming out of the government of leaving
this decision to the Northern Ireland Assembly, although that is suspended at
the moment. If reconvened, it would, as always, have a built in Unionist
majority.

In a further twist, if the UK left the EU without a
deal, an
opinion poll in the Irish Times,
conducted by Deltapoll puts support in Northern Ireland for unity with the
Republic at 52%, hauntingly the same as percentage that voted for Brexit in the
UK. Only 39 per cent said they would vote for Northern Ireland to remain part
of the UK.

The poll also found that more people would vote for a
united Ireland in the event of a hard border being erected. In such
circumstances, 56 per cent said they would vote for unity if a hard border is in place,
while 40 per cent responded they would vote to remain in the UK. All of which
would suggest the prime minister’s rationale has some foundation, but is not
the whole picture. No deal is more likely to see the UK break with Northern
Ireland.

In the event of no deal, might Scotland think again
about independence? Because Scotland is landlocked to England and Wales, the
border issue would be of a different order, but even so, might the Scottish be
encouraged by a united Ireland? Perhaps Scots readers can give an opinion here?

A similar
poll was held in Scotland, where 47 per cent said they would vote for
Scottish independence in a future referendum if the UK left the EU as planned
while 43 per cent said they would vote to stay in the UK. But if Brexit was
stopped, 47 per cent said they would vote for Scotland to stay in the UK and 43
per cent said they would vote for independence.

May’s championing of her Chequers proposals also
rather falls down on the fact the EU have already said it is not acceptable
anyway, even if it could get support in Parliament, which looks extremely
doubtful, to say the least. So as things stand, we are looking at no deal in
any case.

It looks as though the only way to keep the country
from breaking up, is to remain in the EU or a close approximate of it.

Sunday, 23 September 2018

Shortly
before protesters gathered around the world on the eve of the Global Climate
Action Summit, an ecosocialist friend commented on the pointlessness of
engaging in more “feel good” marches. Something struck me as horribly wrong
about this casual dismissal of mass actions in which we take to the streets to
bear witness to the mounting opposition to global ecocide.

As an active
participant in San Francisco Bay Area climate actions over the past five years,
I can’t think of a single march or rally deserving of the trivializing “feel
good” label. None has been a platform for Al Gore or Michael Bloomberg or Jerry
Brown or Michael Shellenberger to peddle market solutions to climate change,
fantasies of capitalism without fossil fuels, nuclear power, or
geo-engineering.

Marches and
rallies are important to the Left not only for their potential to topple
governments, but also because the process of organizing street actions builds
organizational capacity, strengthens ties among activists working on different
fronts, creates opportunities to engage with the larger community, and sparks
intense political struggle without which our movement will remain caged on the
pages of theoretical journals. If building a more powerful movement also feels
good, then we ought to feel good more often.

The
Solidarity to Solutions Week of Actions that took place in San Francisco this
past week exemplified these gains for the climate movement. They were not “feel
good” exercises. In fact, they highlighted the growing strength of a militant
anti-capitalist climate movement with significant leadership by and
participation of people of colour, women, and indigenous activists greatly
underrepresented in the self-identified ecosocialist Left.

Ecosocialists
have much to learn from this movement that we do not lead, but that articulates
a critique of green capitalism, the commodification of nature, and imperialist
domination of the Global South that is deeply compelling and akin to our own.

It Takes
Roots vowed to “spotlight frontline community solutions to the interlinked
economic, democratic and climate crises currently threatening humanity.
Frontline community leaders from the Bay Area, across the U.S. and around the
world will share and discuss place-based solutions that serve to simultaneously
decarbonize, detoxify, demilitarize and democratize our economy through
critical strategies such as Indigenous land rights, food sovereignty, zero
waste, public transportation, ecosystem restoration, universal healthcare,
worker rights, housing rights, racial and gender justice, and economic
relocalization.”

The week
kicked off with a 30,000-person
march in conjunction with the People’s Climate Movement. The march ended
without the usual rally orations, but instead featured painting of the world’s
largest street mural and a vibrant street fair where groups actively fighting
climate change in the Bay Area had an opportunity to engage one-on-one with
participants.

The week
continued with tours of local sites of environmental struggle, a day-long It
Takes Roots member assembly, another day-long summit of workshops open to all,
and two major direct actions confronting the invitation-only GCAS from which
grassroots and radical activists were excluded.

The
larger of the direct actions involved over a thousand demonstrators who
linked arms to block entrance to the GCAS on the day Michael Bloomberg was
scheduled to speak.

A major theme
of this demonstration was “Rise
Against Climate Capitalism.”In the
call to disrupt GCAS, Diablo Rising Tide posted, “We’ve known for a long time
to not believe the false narrative that green capitalism can take care of us
and the planet. The people that got us into the climate crisis are not going to
be the ones to get us out of it.”

Challenging
Governor Brown’s claim to leadership of the world’s fight against climate
change, the call continued “Jerry Brown's record on offshore drilling, fracking
and protecting the water and air of local refinery communities doesn’t match
his rhetoric — so we’re skeptical to say the least.”

Coordinated
by It Takes Roots, Indigenous Environmental Network, Idle No More SF Bay, the Ruckus Society, Brown’s Last Chance, and Diablo Rising Tide, the blockade of GCAS
was at once one of the most diverse and one of the most explicitly
anti-capitalist environmental actions ever held in the Bay Area. Led mostly by
young people of colour, demonstrators held the street for about three hours
before marching to a nearby park for a closing gathering around a large
circular banner that proclaimed “End Climate Capitalism.”

What does this all mean for the future
of ecosocialism?

First, it
means we means we who belong to largely white ecosocialist groups have many
allies with deep roots in communities of colour who share our understanding that
capitalism is incompatible with a decent future for life on our planet.

Second, if
ecosocialism is to go anywhere. ecosocialists must make common cause with these
allies, building relationships through working together, just as they have
worked together over recent years to build relationship among themselves. If
the members of the more than 200 organizations aligned with It Takes Roots are
not going to be part of our ecosocialist revolution, we need to reconsider our
vision.

Third, to
join in common cause will require respect for the vision and priorities these
groups bring forward as we all struggle for the revolutionary change.
Ecological Marxists like John Bellamy Foster, Chris Williams, Ian Angus,
Andreas Malm, Fred Magdoff, Michael Löwy, Joel Kovel, and Richard Smith have
made great contributions to our understanding of capitalism’s threat to life on
the planet and socialism’s offer of a hopeful way out, but we will not find the
path forward if we are only listening to the voices of white male academic
Marxists, even those who have the happy gift of writing in a popular style.

Listening to
other voices will sometimes require us to accept leadership from others outside
our existing circles. The explicit embrace of socialism should not be a litmus
test in determining whom we embrace. Twentieth century socialism led to tragic
flaws and perversions that have made many sincere anti-capitalists reluctant to
reclaim the word, even when garnished with the “eco” prefix.

Any notion
that we who currently identify as ecosocialists are the bearers of a complete
vision of post-revolutionary society, or a complete strategy to get there, is
absurd. Our ecosocialist tendency is still much clearer in its diagnosis of the
capitalist fever that grips the planet than it is in its practical grasp of how
to build a movement that can replace capitalism. The socialist canon does not
answer the perennial question, “What is to be done?”

An authentic
movement for liberation and survival in our time will involve leadership from
Indigenous activists like Kandi
Mossett and Tom
Goldtooth, guiding insights from African-American thinkers like Keeanga-Yamahhta
Taylor, and inspiration from the Rev.
Dr. William J. Barber II. We have much to offer in collaboration, not only
our connection to a worldwide history of struggle against capitalism and a
theory of how it can be overcome but also our curiosity, our determination,
and, if we are really hoping to change the world, our humility.

The It Takes
Roots alliance has glitches to iron out if it is to be a unifying ideological
and practical center. Some Bay Area frontline activists who wanted to be part
of the “official” Week of Actions could not figure out how to get on board. Mysteriously,
It Takes Roots did not welcome efforts by grassroots activists who have been
holding off siting of a coal terminal in frontline West Oakland for
three-and-a-half years. No Coal in
Oakland offered to organize an ecotour and demonstration on the Bay Bridge
pedestrian walkway on the day set aside for ecotours.

Sunflower Alliance, a local group
that led efforts to deny tar sands oil a path to market by imposing caps on
local emissions from Northern California refineries, also found itself
sidelined. The emphasis on Indigenous leadership, including prayer, reportedly
left some Christian pastors wondering where they fit in. Although It Take Roots
is sharply critical of capitalism, it has, as yet, few roots in Labor.

Despite these
concerns, it would be a tragic mistake for activists who are not well-connected
to It Takes Roots to assume ill will. Staging the Week of Actions was an
enormous undertaking that, as anyone who has organized a big coalition event
knows, required much internal struggle that detracted from the group’s ability
to sort out some of its relations with those outside its ranks.

After No Coal
in Oakland’s ecotour proposal got no response, No Coal in Oakland activists, a
number of whom identify as ecosocialists, found other ways to participate
successfully in Sol2Sol week. On the first day of Jerry Brown’s summit, NCIO
staged a spirited picket line outside a nearby responsible investment
conference to call out the bank seeking to finance the West Oakland coal
terminal.

Diablo Rising Tide, one of the organizations spearheading direct
actions during Sol2Sol week, cosponsored the action along with Sunflower
Alliance, and East Bay Democratic Socialists of America. A No Coal in Oakland
affinity group also participated in the GCAS blockade. Relationships are built
this way, by joining forces.

To be sure,
bridging the gap between the currently small ranks of self-described
ecosocialists—some 40 or so of whom marched in the DSA-sponsored ecosocialist
contingent on September 8 in San Francisco--and the “movement of movements”
prefigured by It Takes Roots is going to require ecosocialists to look outside
our silo. Only by dedication to that task will we succeed in addressing the
twenty-first century problem of the ecoleft’s own colour-line.

Ted Franklin
is a co-coordinator of No Coal in Oakland and a member of System Change Not
Climate Change and the Democratic Socialists of America Ecosocialist Working
Group.

Friday, 21 September 2018

The European
Union (EU) has been consistent in the two and a quarter years, although it
seems like longer, since the UK referendum vote to leave the EU. They stated what
their red lines were: a workable solution to keeping open the border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic and maintaining the ‘four freedoms’ of free
movement of goods, services, capital and persons within the EU. Yes, the
negotiations on Brexit, if we can call them that, have been couched in
diplomatic language, but the EU’s position has not changed.

Indeed, on
Northern Ireland, the UK agreed to the ‘backstop’ arrangement for the Irish
border in December last year, but now wants to renege on this it seems. The EU
summit in Saltzburg, Austria, appears to have displayed the utter frustration of
EU nations with Britain’s delusions of grandeur, where prime minister, Theresa
May was told in no uncertain terms that nothing the UK has come up with so far,
is even close to addressing our Brexit relations with EU when we leave.

It was always
likely that push was going to come to shove this autumn, as substantive agreement
really needs to reached by the EU summit on 18 October, less than a month away,
for the EU to deem it is worth holding a special summit in November, to finally
make an agreement. After farting around for over two years the British
government, wasting everyone’s time with ludicrous plans, has now been put on
the spot. Do we want a deal or not, appears to be the exasperated message from
Europe?

Maybe we don’t
want a deal, and should fess up and tell the EU this, because even a Canada
style free trade agreement (no tariffs on trade) is not on offer unless the no border
in Ireland issue is resolved. Certainly some people prefer the World Trade
Organisation default position on the right of the Tory party and perhaps
elsewhere. This scenario would almost certainly cause a recession in the UK in
the short term, eventually the UK may recover, but this will take several years,
maybe ten, before we get back to anything like the situation we have inside the
EU.

Some
Brexiters even agree with analysis, Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it might take fifty
years for Britain to see the benefit of leaving the EU, so why is this so
desirable? The rather vague slogan of ‘taking back control’ is the only justification
that they can come up with. But what does this mean in practice? Allowing US
businesses to run the NHS? Eating fluoridated chicken and hormone pumped beef
from the US? Allowing Genetically Modified crops to be grown in the UK? Reduced
employment rights for workers? Reduced protection for our environment? Some
freedom that.

It is not as
though immigration will stop, or even reduce to the fabled tens of thousands when
we do leave the EU. Britain is apparently trying to recruit Jamaican nurses to
work in the NHS, and other sectors will need to do similarly, if the country is
to function properly. After the Windrush scandal, why anyone would want to come
to Britain is an open question, perhaps we will have to bribe them handsomely?

Anything
could still happen, we might crash out, we might compromise enough to get some
kind of deal with EU, we might have another referendum and vote to stay in the
EU, we might have a general election which if the Tories lose, could be a game
changer. But the way the Tory government is riven with division, but still
clinging onto power, I now think that the most likely scenario is crashing out
of the EU, which I didn’t think would happen. I thought sense in the end would
prevail, and some sort of compromise would be reached. It looks like I was
wrong.

So, start
stocking up on tinned food and lock all doors and windows on 29 March next
year. We are in for a bumpy ride.

Thursday, 20 September 2018

The Labour party is set to publish plans for curbs on
the gambling industry, ahead of its conference, which starts on Sunday in
Liverpool. The policies are intended to reduce the number of problem gamblers
in the UK, estimated to be 430,000. According
to the Guardian, Labour will ban the use of credit cards, place limits on
gambling adverts attached to live sporting events and ban gambling companies
from advertising on players’ football shirts.

Research by the Guardian during this summer’s football
World Cup found that viewers were exposed to almost 90 minutes of betting
adverts during the tournament, prompting concern
about the impact on children. The Gambling Commission said
earlier this year that it was weighing up the merits of a ban on credit card
betting, while the UK’s leading gambling charity, GambleAware, has
previously backed the measure.

In my youth, gambling for the mass of people was
restricted to horse racing, and to a lesser extent greyhound racing. Betting
shops used to be very drab places, with no televisions or refreshments allowed,
and hours of opening tightly controlled. The laws around gambling have been
liberalized over the years by both Tory and Labour governments, but I think it
has now gone too far.

Gambling has grown into many other sports now,
especially football and cricket, and there are a host of online gambling
websites, featuring poker and other casino games. People can gamble on these
sites at any time of the day or night, and could well be the worse for alcohol
or drugs. Fortunes can be lost at the click of a mouse.

I don’t have any interest in gambling myself, which I
think is because I hate losing money. I might have a bet on the Grand National
horse race once a year, but not always. I don’t even do the National Lottery.

But I’ve also seen what it can do to compulsive
gamblers. I have known people who liked to bet their rent money on a horse or
greyhound race, they said because of the extra adrenaline rush induced from not
being able to afford to lose the money. Having said all that, I wouldn’t ban
gambling altogether, it can be harmless fun to many people, but the industry
needs tightening up.

Something that has always occurred to me about people
who gamble regularly, is that they never admit that they have lost money. They
say they are breaking even, or just about up, or winning a lot. This doesn’t
make sense when compared to the multi-million pound gambling industry, someone
must be losing, but it never seems to be the people I talk to. It is other
people who are ‘mugs’ who are losing, they say. I am always reminded of the old
saying, ‘you never see a poor bookie.’

The football on Talk Sport Radio, even has betting
embedded in the commentary of the match itself, while the game is going on. The
commentator will be describing the action, and then suddenly will inform you
that such a player is 2/1 to score the next goal etc with Betfred or whoever.
This not only spoils the commentary but always makes me feel uneasy about the
intrusion. Commentators should be describing the game, not slipping in adverts
for gambling companies. This type of advertising should be stopped.

So, Labour is right to call for regulation of the
gambling industry, and not before time. Gambling addiction in the UK is
becoming a big problem. It can lead not only to impoverishment for people, but
family break ups, homes lost and even suicides. It is time to end this
exploitation of people by huge corporate gambling firms who are profiting at
the expense of people’s health and well-being.

Tuesday, 18 September 2018

A few weeks back I was banned by Facebook for thirty six
hours for posting too much. A twenty four hour total ban, even on comments and
an extra twelve hours from posting links etc. Most of my posts are links to
this blog, which I post into several Facebook political groups. I’ve seen
comments on Facebook from others who have had bans on posting of varying length,
one person got banned for a whole month.

I’d say about 80% of people who visit this blog come from
Facebook referrals, so to get a ban is pretty devastating for traffic to the
blog, so I try not to post too much, and avoid getting banned. I know others
who do the same. Why are Facebook so strict on people harmlessly posting into
groups that they are members of? Well, I suspect it is a commercial decision.

Facebook doesn’t seem to like you getting something for
nothing. While serving a ban from posting, you are still allowed to ‘boost’
previous posts, for a fee, of course.It
is not as though I make any money from this blog, it is not a commercial site,
so I don’t see why I should spend money on Facebook. If it was, then I would
have to weigh up whether it was worth investing in Facebook to bring in a
greater amount of revenue. But it isn’t, and I’ve never spent a penny on the
blog.

I suppose because I use Facebook so much, it has become, in
effect, my publisher, although I only thought about that recently. I am trying
to increase traffic from other sources, other than Facebook, but with only modest
gains so far. Facebook unfortunately is the easiest and most effective medium
for attracting readers. Readers are important to me, there seems little point
in writing if hardly anyone reads it. More important though, one of the main
aims of this blog, is to spread ideas.

This blog, like most blogs, has an email feed facility, but
not many have taken it up. I suspect this is because people want to discuss the
posts with others in their Facebook groups, which is great, but it does tie me
to Facebook.

Groups are the hardest feature of Facebook to replace, since
they serve a wide range of purposes for different people. There aren’t really
any other platforms that that offer the group type facility, although some
claim to. Have a google and check it out yourself.

The latest platform for writers is called Civil,
apparently run by the New York Times. As their site says:

‘Civil is a blockchain-based economy that involves the
direct, peer-to-peer exchange of value between journalists who report articles,
make videos, record podcasts, and the people who read, watch, listen and
support their work.’

In practice you have to buy ‘tokens’ which are a kind of
crypto-currency, to be able to take part. I don’t think I really fancy the
sound of that.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is widely credited as being the
inventor of the world wide web, is said to be developing an alternative to
Facebook, called Solid. But the motivation appears to be protecting users data
from being misused, as happened with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. It
is not clear to me whether it will seek to replace the groups function on
Facebook.

Some bloggers get most of their links from Twitter, and
although I have been building my following on Twitter, it has only increased
a little. So, at the moment at least, it looks as though I’m stuck with
Facebook, for all the problems that it gives me. Which reminds me, a few of us
small left media outlets and bloggers have set up a Facebook group specifically to
spread our work.

Sunday, 16 September 2018

We are facing
deep-rooted climate, social, and environmental crises. The current dominant
economic system cannot provide solutions. It is time for system change.

For Friends
of the Earth International this means creating societies based on peoples’
sovereignty and environmental, social, economic, and gender justice. We must
question and deconstruct the capitalist logic of accumulation.

The climate
catastrophe is interwoven with many social and environmental crises,
including oppression, corporate power, hunger, water depletion, biodiversity
loss and deforestation.

Equality and reciprocity

At its heart
sits an unsustainable economic system, the sole aim of which is endless growth
and profit. This system concentrates wealth, power, and obscene privilege with
the few.

Corporations
and national elites are empowered by that very system to exploit people and
their livelihoods with impunity.

We must
tackle climate change and the associated social and environmental crises by
taking rapid and bold action to address the common root causes; privatization,
financialization and commodification of nature and societies, and unsustainable
production and consumption systems.

The magnitude
of the crises we face demands system change.

That system
change will result in the creation of sustainable societies and new relations
between human beings, and between human beings and nature, based on equality
and reciprocity.

Expansion of capital

But we cannot
create these societies and assert people’s rights without increasing people’s
power. We need to reclaim politics.

This means
creating genuine, radical, and just democracies centered around people’s
sovereignty and participation.

System change
calls for an articulation of the struggles against oppression; that is,
patriarchy, racism, colonialism, and class and capitalist exploitation.

It demands
commitment to the struggle against the exploitation of women’s bodies and work.
We are witnessing how the expansion of capital over the territories leads to
increased violence against women alongside the violation of their rights.

Economic justice

Gender
justice will only be possible when we recognize women as political
subjects, stop violence against women, strengthen women’s autonomy, advance the
principles of feminist economy, deconstruct the sexual division of labor, and
reorganize care work.

A
transformation of the energy system is fundamental to system change. It entails
democratic answers to the fundamental questions: for whom and what is energy
produced? And a total departure from fossil fuel reliance and corporate
control.

This must be
a just transition, founded on workers’ and community rights. It is not only
about changing technologies and renewable energy, but about public and
community ownership and control, therefore addressing the root problems of a
system that turns energy into a commodity and denies the right to energy for
all.

It requires
equity and justice, especially for those already impacted by the changing
climate in the global South.

Genuine
system change would radically transform the food system toward food sovereignty and
agroecology: valuing local knowledge, promoting social and economic justice
and people’s control over their territories, guaranteeing the right to land,
water and seeds, nurturing social relations founded on justice and solidarity,
and recognizing the fundamental role of women in food production, to provide an
effective way to feed the world, and a counter to destructive industrial
agriculture.

Biodiversity and
forests are best protected by the communities who live in them. Protecting
forests can address climate change by maintaining natural carbon stores and
reducing the amount of carbon released through deforestation, while providing
communities with food, fibers, shelter, medicines, and water. Just eight per
cent of the world’s forests are managed by communities; it is vital we secure
community rights over forests and livelihoods.

Popular mobilization

System change
must address people’s individual and collective needs and promote reciprocity,
redistribution, and sharing.

Solutions
include public services achieved through tax justice, social ownership and
co-operativism, local markets and fair trade, community forest management, and
valuing the wellbeing of people and the planet.

People all
over the world are already living or implementing thousands of initiatives
which embody justice and challenge the capitalist logic. Now we must expand
them.

And that
requires commensurate international and national public policies that empower
people to fight for a democratic state that ensures rights and provides environmentally
and socially just public services, and active popular participation; a state
that guarantees peoples’ rights to water, land and the territories, food,
health, education, housing, and decent jobs.

We all need
to support local and international resistance, engage in popular mobilization,
strive for policy change and upscale the real solutions, the solutions of the
people. This is system change.

Thursday, 13 September 2018

Tory MPs are back from their summer holidays, where no doubt
they managed to fit in a good deal of plotting, over Brexit and the immediate
future of the prime minister Theresa May. Now they are back though, the
in-fighting has already gone up several notches, with the European Research
Group (ERG) of hard Brexit Tory MPs finally
launching their alternative plan. Much of it has already been ruled out by
the European Union (EU) though, but the intention is to kill off the prime
minister’s Chequers Brexit plan, as much as anything else.

Members of the Cabinet are some of the few Tory MPs who
support the Chequers plan, and indeed party members overwhelmingly reject it
too, but the government insists it is the only plan being pursued. Dominic
Raab, Brexit secretary, said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

‘there will be the choice between the deal that I’m
confident we can strike with the EU and the no deal scenario.’

Take it or leave it, in other words. But this won’t phase
the ERG MPs, who would rather have a no deal Brexit than the Chequers deal. Meanwhile,
Tory MP Nick Boles, from the pro-soft Brexit wing of the party, has
outlined his alternative to the Chequers plan, which is joining the
European Economic Area (EEA), ‘at least on the way to some kind of Canada style
deal.’ More broadly, pro-soft Brexit Tory MPs are beginning
to get organised, for the expected punch up in the party over the next few
months.

Boles writes on Conservative Home website: ‘So the questions
that every Conservative MP needs to ask themselves are these. If the Prime
Minister’s plan does not get through the Commons, what then? If MPs also can’t
stomach a “No Deal” Brexit, what’s the alternative?’

There is certainly a good chance that the Chequers plan will
not get through Parliament, with Labour saying it will vote against the deal,
even before the EU has wrought some expected concessions out of the British
government. So, Boles has a point, Chequers looks to please no one, and as there
is no majority in Parliament for no deal, what then?

‘The EEA not only delivers Brexit by being outside the
jurisdiction of the ECJ and, for that matter, the Common Fisheries Policy and
the Common Agricultural Policy. Norway and co also have input to single market
legislation via the decision shaping process. They have rights of adaptation.
And, in extremis, right of veto.

…George Yarrow, an Oxford University economist (and
intellectual father of Better Brexit), estimates Britain’s net payments to the
EU would fall from £9 billion to around £1.5 billion (per year).

I’ve written
before that joining the EEA is the most sensible thing to do, other than
remaining in the EU. It may be the only viable option if Chequers and no deal
are ruled out by Parliament. The only other option is to extend our stay in the
EU, which worries some pro-Brexit members of the Cabinet, like Michael Gove.

There has been talk of toppling Theresa May from elements of
the ERG, but even if they managed to do this, and replace her with a hard
Brexit MP, like Boris Johnson, the make up of Parliament would remain the same,
unless a general election is called to change this composition in the House of
Commons. Even then, the Tories might lose the election, and so be in an even
weaker position than they are now.

As the temperature rises in Parliament, the previously Eurosceptic
Daily Mail, has accused those hard Brexiters plotting against the prime
minister, as being ‘traitors.’ The piece goes on to say:

‘It is not as if they have the numbers to bring her down.
Let alone do they have a coherent alternative plan for Brexit – nor, indeed, an
obvious candidate to replace her, capable of uniting a divided party.’

And there you have it. The Tories are a (deeply) divided
party over the terms of Brexit, with no easy way that I can see of resolving
their differences. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, while they indulge
themselves in this carnival of self-destruction, the country faces the
possibility of chaos.

Tuesday, 11 September 2018

The government has revealed its proposals for re-drawing the
Parliamentary boundaries and so reduce the number of constituencies (and
therefore MPs) from the current 650 down to 600. The new boundaries will favour
the Tories, in terms of net MPs gained or lost.

The reduction
in seats impacts on all parties but Labour most of all. While the
Conservatives are set to lose 10 seats overall (down from 318 won last June, a
figure that includes the Speaker) the re-distribution means that Labour falls by
30 seats, and the Lib Dems 5. The Scottish
National Party will likely have a net loss of 6 seats and Plaid
Cymru in Wales a net loss of 2. The Green party would remain unchanged with
one MP.

The Electoral Reform Society said changes to equalise
constituencies were just tinkering, when the first-past-the-post electoral
system meant the number of votes per MP elected in 2017 varied from just under
28,000 for the Democratic Unionist party to more than 500,000 for the Green
party.

It all looks suspiciously like gerrymandering in favour of
the ruling Tory party, although the government says that the current boundaries
favour the Labour party, and so reform is necessary. They say that the new
boundaries will just be an exercise in ‘fairness’ as most constituencies will
be equalised to 71,000 to 78,000 registered voters rather than the 55,000 to
110,000 range currently.

The new boundaries do not equalise all constituencies
though, for example, the Isle of Wight will go from one constituency of 110,000
to two of 55,000, both likely to be won by the Tories.

The government is keen to stress that the proposed changes
are the recommendations of the boundary commissions for England, Scotland,
Wales (and Northern Ireland), but the government did set the parameters of
their remit, particularly the equalisation of registered voters. Inevitably
this would favour the Tories, with Labour voters less likely to make sure they
are registered to vote.

One
study by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, academics at the University
of Plymouth, calculated that the new boundaries would have given the
Conservatives an overall majority of 16 in last year’s election, which resulted
in a hung Parliament, under the existing boundaries.

The proposals will need to be approved by both Houses of
Parliament, which may be no easy feat given the numbers in both Houses, but is
likely to be introduced next year. Some prominent Tory MPs are at risk, like
Boris Johnson and David Davis, so getting this through Parliament may not be
straightforward. The Tories tried to get similar proposals adopted in 2013, but
had to withdraw the plan when the Lib Dems refused to support it.

Whichever way you look at it, our present First Past The
Post (FPTP) electoral system is unfair, wherever the boundaries are drawn. The
fairest electoral systems have at least some element of proportional voting,
with top lists for those under represented by the FPTP system. It also avoids
arguments about gerrymandering.

The Tories and Labour are reasonably happy with FPTP,
because no other system would be likely to give them majorities in Parliament,
big majorities sometimes, so they get carte blanche to do pretty much what they
want, on about 40% of the vote. How can this be fair?

I know we had a referendum on the replacing FPTP with the
Alternative Vote (AV) system in 2011, which resulted in a heavy vote to reject
AV, but AV is not really a proportional system, and little better than what we
have in terms of fairness. But if we are to try make the system fairer, then
proportional voting is the best way to achieve this.

Sunday, 9 September 2018

Like many
others (unless they are in a state of simple denial), I sometimes feel
paralyzed by the enormity of the environmental challenge.

How to break
through this?

We must begin
with the certainties.

First is the
science. Not every aspect of it, of course, but the basic contours. The most
in-depth, up-to-date, and accessible account is Ian Angus’s 2016 Monthly Review
Press book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the
Earth System (see
my review at Climate and Capitalism). When you read this book, you will see
how in some respects the point of no return has already been reached. But even
if full collapse is only a matter of time, many life-and-death choices will
still confront us along the way – over what we may hope will be more than a
single lifetime.

The second
certainty is that we are being systematically lied to by the most powerful
interests in this society. It is now known that the big oil companies, by their
own research in the 1970s, confirmed what would later become common knowledge
about the climate-impact of greenhouse gases, but they then undertook a
deliberate campaign of obfuscation which continues to this day (see updates at kochvsclean.com).

The third
certainty is an outcome of the second: hundreds of millions of people who
should – and could – be waging the battle of and for their lives, are instead
propelled by a structured inertia, part “practical” and part ideological, to
continue with their daily routines – of heating or cooling, driving, flying,
over-indulging in one or another addiction, and acquiescing in wars of
domination – as though nothing had changed.

And yet
things have changed! This is the fourth certainty, although it is less obvious
than the first three because its manifestations don’t appear with equal
severity everywhere at once. Here I am thinking not of the underlying trends
but of the countless unusual phenomena that are evident to even the most casual
observer – or TV watcher – but whose cumulative message we mostly ignore in our
day-to-day lives. We see TV images of fire, flood, and war – what started as a
war for oil – but yet our highways become ever more congested and continue to
be widened. We hear of water shortages, new viruses, crop blights, and species
extinctions, but we have yet to do away with even the least needed and most
harmful lines of production.

Where
collapse is most tangible is where environmental extremes intersect with the
extremes of social polarization. Texas prisoners are now frequently dying in
the torrid summers as the indoor heat index climbs as high as 130 (F). Most of
the state prisons lack air conditioning,[1] and
political leaders refuse to remedy the situation, even as the state generates
millions of dollars from the prisoners’ unpaid labor. The conditions are not
new, but global warming is taking them past the tipping point. The example of
the prisons is replicated in the growing incidence, globally, of people being
deprived of water, food, or dry land.

It is not surprising
that the most inveterate opposition to addressing this crisis stems from the
very interests that have profited the most from bringing it on. The problem is
that whereas those interests – the corporations along with the technocrats and
politicians who speak for them – are tightly organized, the rest of us are not.
The immediately felt disasters (our fourth “certainty”) are scattered, and so
are their victims, giving credence to the contention that people will not take
action until some future threshold is reached.

Out of the
resulting uncertainty must be forged a proactive response. Does this bring us
back to our anxious starting-point? Not quite, because in pinpointing the
systemic culprit for the impending disaster, we discover the necessary focal
point for our own unity. The fight to preserve our species-life is a political
struggle par excellence. Having identified who the enemy is, we know who our
potential allies are – the other “99%.” All the differences within this vast
agglomeration pale next to the overwhelming urgency of our common task.

But the
blending of people’s more immediate preoccupations into the common agenda does
not come automatically. The priorities of each constituency need to be
addressed on their own merits (as I discuss in the last three chapters of my
newly released book, Red-Green Revolution). But the capacity to do this without
losing sight of the common thread will depend on the building of a political
organization in which all our constituencies are represented.

Adapted from
an article in And Then #20 (2018)

Victor Wallis is a professor of
Liberal Arts at the Berklee College of Music. He was for twenty years the
managing editor of Socialism and Democracy and has been writing on ecological
issues since the early 1990s. His writings have appeared in journals such as
Monthly Review and New Political Science, and have been translated into
thirteen languages.

He is the
author of the book Red-Green
Revolution, published by this magazine’s parent company, Political Animal
Press.